The Limits of Ministerial Accountability

Today's Ontario Auditor's report on eHealth has got me thinking about the concept of "ministerial accountability". Under this concept, the Minister is held responsible for anything that happens in his or her ministry. If anything goes wrong, it is laid at the feet of the Minister. And critics call for the Minister to resign.

I think that the concept of ministerial accountability should be balanced to take into account the responsibility of the Minister and the Deputy Minister. In my understanding, the Deputy Minister (or Deputy Head - CEO, etc) is responsible and accountable for the proper administration of the ministry or agency. The Minister should not get involved in the day to day administrative issues of the ministry. The Minister is responsible for providing the broad policy (and small p political) direction of the ministry.

We get into trouble when this line becomes blurred and Ministers try to administratively run the operations of the ministry/agency. We have seen this blurring much too often in legislatures across the country and in the media. Whenever anything goes wrong that is operational in nature, critics call for the resignation of the Minister. But when we look at what went wrong and why, it is often an administrative matter that is the responsibility of the public service.

Unless there is complete incompetence or malfeasance that should be dealt with severely, a true learning organization learns from its mistakes and ensures that procedures and processes are changed to ensure better results.

As I was thinking about the role of the Minister and of the Deputy Minister, I remembered a classic episode from “Yes, Minister” about Government Policy. In this clip, Sir Humphrey is called in front of a Parliamentary Committee to answer questions on a government policy. His view is that the Minister answers questions about policy, while the civil service answers questions about administration.



Obviously this is a comedic view of the difference between policy & administration and having appeared in front of quite a few legislative committees I can testify that this is not how the public services answer questions - but I felt we all deserved a good chuckle!

I understand the politics that are at play in any of these issues across the country, but I guess what I am saying is that there should be a better understanding of the roles of the key players in government and that accountability must be tied to a person's responsibility and ability to affect change.

I will be coming back to this topic in the next while.